Last month we hosted our Light The Night show for the third year, the show actually predates the formation of MNCEC. Each year it has grown and has become one of the go-to shows during the Minnesota Car Show season. The turn out was great, the food trucks were delicious and the only real issue was the city placing the restrooms a block west of where they were supposed to be located.

That's it, I'm settling it once and for all. These "Best car for $5,000 or less" posts keep cropping up like some automotive variant of the Herpes Simplex virus so we decided to end it once and for all with an official Facebook poll. I left the poll open on the MNCEC Facebook group for 2 weeks, each of these cars got 30+ votes to rule out any statistical abnormalities, I bumped the poll every day or so to make sure people saw it and people were allowed to add their own entries as well.

So enough babbling, here are your votes on what the 5 Best Project Cars Under $5,000 are...

On a regular basis I hear the comment of "the 80's were terrible for cars" which couldn't be any farther from the truth. People give the era as a whole a bad wrap, sure the 90's arguably had some better platforms but the 1980's were nothing to scoff at. As much as I can wax poetic about the beautiful excess and technological optimism of the 1980's, there is no better evidence than an all 80's car show to prove my point. Minnesota Fieros Forever recently held their Back To The 80's event for all 1980's era cars and we are here with coverage.

So I've been the recipient of at least a dozen snapchats, Facebook PMs, text messages, telegraphs and carrier pigeons all asking me what this strange little car cruising around the pits at Proving Grounds was (pictured above). The car is none other than a HA21 Suzuki Alto Works. Although I was not there and couldn't talk to the owner, apparently it was a Canadian fella that got word from a friend of the event at BIR and decided it was worth the drive down south. This is a pretty esoteric car for those of us who aren't Gran Turismo geeks or neckbeard JDM Otakus so I'll give a quick description about the hype around this car. So what's the deal with the Suzuki Alto?

With great sadness here at MNCEC we unfortunately have to announce news of the passing of Vic Edelbrock Jr. last week. Vic Jr. took the reigns of the Edelbrock empire in late 1962, while Vic Sr. cemented the name Edelbrock as a name in automotive performance, Vic Jr. was instrumental in modernizing and growing the company. Often with the death of the founder or an influential leader, it is hard for a company to find such brilliance a second time. With Vic Jr. lightening did strike twice as he saw the company through trials and tribulations that would have led a lesser leader to failure.

At the beginning of May MNCEC put on their first show of the year, aptly named Ignition. Originally it was going to be held at the US Bank Stadium ramp but due to the turn out at the Winter Ramp Meet in February it was moved to Canterbury Park. We couldn't have asked for better weather at the show and the turn out was unreal. I spent literally the entire show judging with our guest judges; Art from Grimmspeed, Dan Carey from Modern Automotive Performance and Brian Jannusch from International Vehicle Importers. With nearly 1000 cars to judge and 4 people over a course of 4 hours, we had our work set out and it took literally the entire time.

Since the dawn of the automobile there has been a draw to improve upon the basic bones a manufacturer offers. Early Model T owners were fitting perfromance carburetors and aftermarket water pumps on the cars as early as 1910. As we all know, these innocent little attempts to improve the usability of automobiles would eventually evolve into the $73 billon per year industry we have today. At the heart of it all is the same desire, the drive to improve the machine you have and overcome it's inherent weaknesses.

While America was overcoming their malaise of the previous decade and Europe was doing a fantastic job catering to the 1%, a third option found it's way into the American lexicon. The Japanese automobile. Japanese cars had been around in America since the 1950's but with The Malaise of the 70's the Japanese imports began to find their way into American households in large numbers for the first time. Like the rise of the mammals over dinosaurs after the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event, The 70's saw the once great giants of American muscle cars lose ground to the more nimble Japanese cars.